


A better class of criminal

by Obotligtnyfiken



Series: Chickens coming home to roost [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Evil Mary, Gen, Snipers, The Pool Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obotligtnyfiken/pseuds/Obotligtnyfiken
Summary: The geniuses she was watching belonged in the misogynistic past of self-possessed alpha males. The future belonged to her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE: I have now written two sequels to A Better Class of Criminal and put them in a series of their own: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. They also belong to the series Chickens Coming Home to Roost (see below).
> 
> A Better Class of Criminal takes place during the pool scene, the last scene of the first season and the first scene of the second season of BBC’s Sherlock. It is inspired by the prompt “That wife ...” + "incredibly pink sleeping bag" that I got from a friend.
> 
> The prompt is based on one of my “Moffat’s Chickens”: twelve ideas from the hiatus about what Steven Moffat could have meant when he said in an interview that chickens were coming home to roost in s4. Link for Moffat's Chickens: https://obotligtnyfiken.tumblr.com/post/138370350688/master-post-for-moffats-chickens
> 
> I do not own these characters. This work is for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> A big thank you to wetislandinthenorthatlantic for helping me sort out the plot!

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Amira whispered.

“What?”

“A pink sleeping bag?” Amira felt like she was about to choke on the chlorine smell from the pool water. She had been in this game for too long to put up with stuff like this.

“What's the big deal? It's not as if you'll have to sleep in it. The boss said he’d make contact tonight for sure. It's just standard equipment for a stakeout.”

“I know what the standard equipment is. What kind of an imbecile are you?” She really was going to have to find herself a better class of criminal to work with soon. This was just intolerable. “But who on earth thought it was a good idea to buy a pink sleeping bag? And why just one? And why does it have to be for me?”

Matt looked sheepishly at her. “Well — I just thought it was nice.”

“You thought it was nice?” Amira thought she might be developing a brain aneurysm. Or maybe Matt was. That might explain his thinking problem. “What if this thing goes pear shaped? Moriarty isn't exactly known for low risk strategies and that Holmes guy works with the police. And his older brother is MI5 or something. What if we have to evacuate and can't get the gear out of this bloody swimming pool? They are going to find five green sleeping bags and one that is pink. An incredibly pink sleeping bag, I might add. Do you think the police are so stupid that they will not think to themselves ‘hm, I wonder if there was a woman among these snipers’? How many female freelance snipers do you think there are, Matt? I never leave a trace, but I've been in this game for ten years now. Someone is bound to have had a loose mouth at some point.”

Matt stared at her. “I'm sorry. I didn't think.”

“No, you sure as hell didn't.”

Amira turned her back on Matt and started pulling out her laser sight and silencer from the black duffel bag, stuffing the bright pink mini sleeping bag out of sight. After a moment, he followed her lead and started to assemble his own kit. Across the room, they could hear the other snipers shuffling about on the balcony around the pool.

Amira assembled her weapon and sat down to wait. Next to her, Matt finished his preparations and sat down beside her.

“How do we know this is where it will happen?” Matt asked. “I thought Moriarty was waiting for the other guy to contact him? How does he know he'll pick this pool? What if he chooses a different place?”

“I don’t know,” Amira shrugged. “They have some sort of history, apparently.”

Amira’s pager buzzed and she twisted the holster towards her to check the screen without having to remove the pager. Showtime.

The room fell silent as all the snipers read the same message and assumed their positions on the balcony. All that could be heard was a slow dripping from a water faucet. It echoed eerily in the darkened swimming pool.


	2. Chapter 2

A better class of criminal, that’s what she needed, Amira thought to herself as she kept her laser pointed at the little man wrapped in a bomb vest. The whole thing was absurd. There was a theatrical scene being played out down by the pool with her boss in the leading role. Up above in the wings, she and five other snipers were waiting for their queue. She had worked with most of them before and they were little more than thugs — sloppy and incompetent, apart from having a good eye for killing. She just couldn’t go on like this. She needed a change. To only do government work was not an option. It was professional enough, but oh so boring. Maybe she should set up shop herself, stop taking orders and start giving them. 

The man prancing about on the tiles below was brilliant, of course, but quite mad. Now, he seemed to have found another, taller madman who was just as enamoured with clever games as he was. It could only end badly. The question was when.

“Oh, that! The missile plans. Boring! I could have got them anywhere.” Moriarty flung the tiny memory stick into the pool.

The little man suddenly threw himself at Moriarty and started shouting about them both going up. Amira suppressed a sigh and shifted her aim back and forth as various veins and arteries came into view. She had started to see human bodies like that, organs to hit and sinews to cut, rather than arms and legs and smiles and laughing eyes. It was a shame that for some reason, the boss had explicitly forbidden her to aim at the man’s head. Where did the head actually start, she mused. Maybe she could get away with shooting him in the face? Or the neck? No, he was too short. She couldn’t shoot him in the neck without nicking Moriarty’s shoulder. That would probably not go down well. Maybe Moriarty was squeamish about brain matter? As long as she stayed away from that, he probably didn’t care where she shot the guy.

“Oops! You’ve rather shown your hand there, Dr Watson. Gotcha!” Moriarty said.

So that was the little man’s name. Dr Watson.

Dr Watson released Moriarty and backed off, obviously defeated. He was staring at Holmes’ chest. Smithy must have aimed a the Holmes guy’s heart as planned.

Moriarty rounded off his useless theatrics and took his leave.

Amira lifted her rifle and blinked as she adjusted to not having one eye pressed to the eyepiece. Below, the scene continued despite the main character having left the stage. Dr Watson had to crouch leaning against the changing stalls as his legs wouldn’t hold him up. Adrenaline, she thought. Holmes was pacing along the pool, scratching his head with the presumably loaded gun.

It was odd. The crazy man had left and they should be leaving too, but instead they seemed wrapped in their own drama, too caught up with themselves to give a thought to the snipers above them or the explosives lying just a few meters away.

Amira paused and looked more closely at the pair. What was it that Moriarty had called Dr Watson? A loyal pet? If a pet could look at you the way Dr Watson was looking at Mr Holmes, she was going to have to get herself a dog.

No, she realised. Moriarty was wrong. Dr Watson wasn’t a pet. No pet in the world had that relationship with its master. He was something much more valuable, something that Moriarty would never understand — a confidante. Someone who was willing to risk his life to save his friend, and then joke inappropriately about it.

In that moment, Amira realised, the future she wanted suddenly seemed perfectly clear to her. She was going to be her own boss, like Moriarty, but with a comfortable, legal cover. She had already found a suitable identity, a still born Mary Morstan who was born the same year as her. And, to top it off, she was going to find herself a confidant, a Watson to her Holmes. Moriarty and Holmes may be clever, but she knew that she was street smart enough for both of them. They belonged in the misogynistic past of self-possessed alpha males. The future belonged to her.


End file.
